The concept of “modern” wine was born in 1976 after the now infamous "Judgment of Paris," when several Californian varietals triumphed in a blind taste test against much-lauded French vintages (later immortalized in Randall Miller’s 2008 film Bottle Shock). From that watershed moment, minds and palettes across the globe were opened to vintages from the New World, as evidenced in the exhibition How Wine Became Modern: Design + Wine 1976 to Now, currently at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. Inspired by the show, photographer and filmmaker Matthew Donaldson teamed up with interior stylist Leila Latchin to capture unexpected vessels created for oenophiles in intriguing domestic scenarios: a Philippe Starck Baccarat goblet, seemingly hewn from a large piece of crystal, sits atop a radiator; the Riedel “Eve” decanter––curled like a serpent ready to strike––nestles in a windowsill, filled with Savennières; a three-foot-high wine glass stretches luxuriantly across a couch, and Bordeaux spills from a horizontal-stemmed receptacle, both dreamed up by designer Jeremy Brown, taken from his offbeat This is (Not) series. “I wanted to shoot these extraordinary objects in a 'normal' environment," Donaldson says. “Drinking wine is something that we’ve done for hundreds of years of course, but we’re doing it with a twist.”
See the full list of credits here, and unlock the secrets of Bacchus in our interview with sommelier Christie Dufault.